Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
O.M. That there is no such thing. Did
the man possess it who gave the old woman his last
shilling and trudged home in the storm?
Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the
old woman and leaving her to suffer. Isn’t
it so?
O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between
bodily comfort on the one hand and the comfort of
the spirit on the other. The body made a strong
appeal, of course—the body would be quite
sure to do that; the spirit made a counter appeal.
A choice had to be made between the two appeals,
and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man
determined it, and that in doing it he exercised Free
Will.
O.M. We are constantly assured that every man
is endowed with Free Will, and that he can and must
exercise it where he is offered a choice between good
conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly
saw that in that man’s case he really had no
Free Will: his temperament, his training, and
the daily influences which had molded him and made
him what he was, compelled him to rescue the
old woman and thus save himself—save
himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness.
He did not make the choice, it was made for
him by forces which he could not control. Free
Will has always existed in words, but it stops
there, I think—stops short of fact.
I would not use those words—Free Will—but
others.
Y.M. What others?
O.M. Free Choice.
Y.M. What is the difference?
O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to act
as you please, the other implies nothing beyond a
mere mental process: the critical ability
to determine which of two things is nearest right
and just.
Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
O.M. The mind can freely select, choose,
point out the right and just one—its
function stops there. It can go no further in
the matter. It has no authority to say that
the right one shall be acted upon and the wrong one
discarded. That authority is in other hands.
Y.M. The man’s?
O.M. In the machine which stands for him.
In his born disposition and the character which has
been built around it by training and environment.
Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter.
George Washington’s machine would act upon
the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong one.
Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man’s
mental machinery calmly and judicially points out
which of two things is right and just—
O.M. Yes, and his moral machinery will
freely act upon the other or the other, according
to its make, and be quite indifferent to the mind’s
feeling concerning the matter—that is, would
be, if the mind had any feelings; which it hasn’t.
It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
